(2014-05-28) Apple Buying Beats

After lots of advance speculation, it's confirmed that Apple Computer is buying Beats. Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine are joining Apple.

Some say this is less about the Head Phones than the Beats Music Streaming service.

• In 2013 Jimmy Iovine positioned Beats Music as an artist-friendly Platform. Right now, they (music services) have all the information and the artist have no information. No one knows… I don’t know. I own a record company. I would die to know who bought my records on iTunes or bought my tickets on Ticket Master. (Sounds like the new-MySpace position.)
• Ben Evans takes the opposite view.

Beats' "TheSentence" MadLibs way of generating mood-based Play List-suggestions is very interesting - smells related to low-tech Crowd Sourcing....

• Borrowed from Songza, it’s basically a game of musical Mad Libs: You select a setting, a mood, who you’re with, and a genre of choice, and Beats creates an infinite playlist based on those factors.
• Understandably, things can get pretty weird.